Xen going to be in Kernel 2.6 soon?
Hi,
according to the german news-magazine heise.de, Xen will be in Kernel 2.6 soon. I feel like this is a slap in Jeff's face, since i thought that UML will be developed as the first choice in virtualizations techniques. I also thought, that UML will perhaps soon be as fast as Xen since SKAS4 is on horizon.
So what is it all about? When should somebody chose Xen, and when should somebody chose UML? and how will UML and Xen compete?
Thx
Sven
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Sky, comma, falling. (Was Re: [uml-devel] Xen going to be in Kernel 2.6 soon?)
Quoted 3 lines · Sven Köhler
I feel like this is a slap in Jeff's face, since i thought
that UML will be developed as the first choice in virtualizations techniques.
Yup, just like the inclusion of reiserfs in the kernel is a slap in the face to ext3. Obviously they did it just to be insulting, didn't you read Linus's "I'm a bastard" speech?
Quoted 2 lines
So what is it all about? When should somebody chose Xen, and when should somebody chose UML? and how will UML and Xen compete?
You know, ever since the release of the BSD source code in 1992 totally derailed that "Linux" project people were playing with back then, this kind of question has become vitally important. The release of any remotely similar project obviously can immediately halt all development of established projects that developers have sunk years of effort into, and they immediately start porting over things like the COW mounts and hostfs and honeypot procfs, and rewrite all the existing tutorials and retrain everybody overnight to work on the new as yet untested thingy that hasn't been particularly debugged yet.
Especially in a case like this, where Xen actually competes with VMWare rather than UML. Obviously, UML is doomed. What with Xen requiring a modified host kernel to provide its virtualization environment whereas UML uses the process abstraction to virtualize it: I mean, who's going to use _processes_ in five years, will future kernels even bother to support them? Sure, UML not only runs on an unmodified Linux kernel (even running a 2.6 UML on a 2.2 host kernel), and even an effort underway to get it running on windows (who knows why, but a MacOS X host can only be a matter of time), but that just means maybe it can scrape on some tiny niches once it's driven off Linux by this new "Adeos" thing... Er, I mean "Plex86"... Um... "Xen", that's it. And obviously its original use as a Linux development tool letting you do things like create a filesystem driver and mount an instance of it without destablizing your host kernel, or run bits of the kernel under normal userspace debugging tools... Well, we're well rid of that, aren't we? And being to swap kernel memory to backing store just like a regular application, that was obviously a bad idea from day one...
Why was the question interesting again?
Rob
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Re: Sky, comma, falling. (Was Re: [uml-devel] Xen going to be in Kernel 2.6 soon?)
Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 1 line
I feel like this is a slap in Jeff's face, since i thought that UML will be developed as the first choice in virtualizations techniques.
Yup, just like the inclusion of reiserfs in the kernel is a slap in the face to ext3. Obviously they did it just to be insulting, didn't you read Linus's "I'm a bastard" speech?
No, i don't know that speech. In addition i like reiserfs, so i'm perhaps the wrong person to discuss that with. The next thing on the horizon is reiser4 - perhaps with the "files as directory" feature - what ever that means, but i guess i won't like it.
Quoted 4 lines
Quoted 2 lines
So what is it all about? When should somebody chose Xen, and when should somebody chose UML? and how will UML and Xen compete?
You know, ever since the release of the BSD source code in 1992 totally derailed that "Linux" project people were playing with back then, this kind of question has become vitally important. The release of any remotely similar project obviously can immediately halt all development of established projects that developers have sunk years of effort into, and they immediately start porting over things like the COW mounts and hostfs and honeypot procfs, and rewrite all the existing tutorials and retrain everybody overnight to work on the new as yet untested thingy that hasn't been particularly debugged yet.
So you critisize, that they don't concentrate forces on UML? I Agree.
With the integration of UML into the Linux-Kernel i thought, that it would speed up development of UML and make it more stable. Intead, the people still break the UML-stuff regularly and Jeff and Blaisorblade must provide patches again :-(
Quoted 1 line
Especially in a case like this, where Xen actually competes with VMWare rather than UML. Obviously, UML is doomed. What with Xen requiring a modified host kernel to provide its virtualization environment whereas UML uses the process abstraction to virtualize it: I mean, who's going to use _processes_ in five years, will future kernels even bother to support them? Sure, UML not only runs on an unmodified Linux kernel (even running a 2.6 UML on a 2.2 host kernel), and even an effort underway to get it running on windows (who knows why, but a MacOS X host can only be a matter of time), but that just means maybe it can scrape on some tiny niches once it's driven off Linux by this new "Adeos" thing... Er, I mean "Plex86"... Um... "Xen", that's it. And obviously its original use as a Linux development tool letting you do things like create a filesystem driver and mount an instance of it without destablizing your host kernel, or run bits of the kernel under normal userspace debugging tools... Well, we're well rid of that, aren't we? And being to swap kernel memory to backing store just like a regular application, that was obviously a bad idea from day one...
VMWare, Xen and UML are different techniques. As far as i know, UML doesn't use processes as the virtualization environment when running in SKAS mode. It runs a new kernel within a different address space - afaik, this is more like VMWare and Xen. But due to haveing a relatively normal hostsystem, there are the advantages you mentioned.
You also forgot some things: Xen doesn't support NPTL too
Quoted 1 line
Why was the question interesting again?
What's the future of Xen and UML? Will Xen grow bigger than UML? Which is Linus's favourite? UML or Xen?
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Re: Sky, comma, falling. (Was Re: [uml-devel] Xen going to be in Kernel 2.6 soon?)
Quoted 3 lines · Sven Köhler
Quoted 1 line
read Linus's "I'm a bastard" speech?
No, i don't know that speech.
You obviously didn't google for "linus bastard speech", either. It's the first hit.
Quoted 3 lines
Quoted 3 lines
You know, ever since the release of the BSD source code in 1992 totally derailed that "Linux" project people were playing with back then, this kind of question has become vitally important.
...
Quoted 1 line
So you critisize, that they don't concentrate forces on UML? I Agree.
American non sequitur society: we don't make sense, but we do like pizza.
Okay, hint: if BSD had "totally derailed" Linux back in 1992, why would we now be talking about how to virtualize Linux? Anyone? Anyone? (Would <sarcasm> </sarcasm> tags around the whole thing have helped?)
Quoted 4 lines
Quoted 1 line
Why was the question interesting again?
What's the future of Xen and UML? Will Xen grow bigger than UML? Which is Linus's favourite? UML or Xen?
Wow. It _was_ possible to miss the sarcasm content of the first post. And here I thought that it wasn't merely dripping with it, but that the sucker had been thorougly hosed down to the point of immersion, and had extra nailed to the side.
To answer the explicit questions for the sarcasm-blind: 1) UML development continues, Xen is a different project that competes with VMWare over in a different niche. 2) Who cares? 3) Linus doesn't use either one, so it would be tough for him to play favorites even if he was in the habit of playing favorites, which he's not. 4) You missed Adeos and Plex86.
I'm going to put away the troll food now.
Rob
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Re: Sky, comma, falling. (Was Re: [uml-devel] Xen going to be in Kernel 2.6 soon?)
In reply to Sven KöhlerQuoted 4 lines · Sven Köhler
With the integration of UML into the Linux-Kernel i thought, that it would speed up development of UML and make it more stable. Intead, the people still break the UML-stuff regularly and Jeff and Blaisorblade must provide patches again :-(
That's true for _all_ architectures these days[*], not even for UML.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
[*] i386 lost its privilege of never being broken since Linus got a G5 ;-) --
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [email protected]
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
Re: Sky, comma, falling. (Was Re: [uml-devel] Xen going to be in Kernel 2.6 soon?)
Quoted 7 lines · Geert Uytterhoeven
Quoted 4 lines · Sven Köhler
With the integration of UML into the Linux-Kernel i thought, that it would speed up development of UML and make it more stable. Intead, the people still break the UML-stuff regularly and Jeff and Blaisorblade must provide patches again :-(
That's true for _all_ architectures these days[*], not even for UML.
It's the 2.6 development model. We haven't got a stable series anymore, now _everybody_ tests the odd releases. :)
Quoted 5 lines
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
[*] i386 lost its privilege of never being broken since Linus got a G5 ;-)
If the Apple Store ever calls me back about that darn mac mini waiting list, porting UML to MacOS X may stop being theoretical. (After I get done playing World of Warcraft, anyway...)
Rob
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Quoted 2 lines · [email protected] said:
according to the german news-magazine heise.de, Xen will be in Kernel 2.6 soon.
What Linus is quoted as saying is that it will go into 2.6. This is consistent with Xen going into 2.6.47 or something. I don't get the feeling that it will go in soon because aspects of the design are fairly controversial.
Quoted 3 lines
I feel like this is a slap in Jeff's face, since i thought that UML will be developed as the first choice in virtualizations techniques.
UML has never has any sort of privileged status. Never has, never will. Everything has to compete on its merits.
Quoted 2 lines
I also thought, that UML will perhaps soon be as fast as Xen since SKAS4 is on horizon.
skas4 is an interface change, not a speedup. As far as speed goes, I have a bunch of nice things in my current patchset, like skas0, system call and tlb flushing optimizations. Also, we (me and some other Intel people) are working on having UML support Intel's VT virtualization extensions, which will bring it much closer to hardware speed.
So, as Rob Landley pointed out, except with much more sarcasm, the sky is not falling.
Jeff
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